I was part of the initial group of folks who drafted those different weblogging policy and guidelines and I must say that without those I doubt I would have started weblogging as well both on the Intranet and on the Internet. It was a good exercise to be able to establish how you could protect not only yourself but also your own weblogging against whatever other issues that may come up out there. We, too, decided to keep it short, simple and effective and from there try to spread the message around as much as we could possibly do so that everyone would be able to use their common sense and those guidelines, if anything, to protect themselves. And by the looks of it things seem to be going all right, I would think.

My blogroll for IBMers is now 30+; it was about five when the blogging guidelines first came out. Far from constricting corporate blogging, IBM's guidelines have empowered employees to amplify IBM's voice in the market and be more responsive to customers. The internal IBM blogs are also way way more active. I know that "IBM blogging guidelines" sounds bureaucratic and "big company", but in our case, it was actually innovative and liberating.